I plan to make and fill/ice five cakes at some stage soon. I saw HB make a delicious gingerbread cake yesterday and wondered if gingerbread would be good in a layered cake or would it be too heavy? And what would be a good filling and icing?

The five pans are 6" diameter and .75" high. The box gives a recipe using one quantity of cake mix apparently sold by Wilton who make the tins. Does anyone know the quantities required to make five cakes of this dimension?

I too think it would be too heavy. Remember that traditional fruit cakes such as Christmas and old-fashioned wedding cakes are made in such a way that they can be tiered but also stored afterwards for a long time ... it means that surplus cake need not be eaten straight away or wasted.

If you go for a sponge-type cake, you can make each layer a different flavour but it needs eating pretty quickly after it is made unless it could be frozen.

Herbidacious wrote:How do you fit them all in the oven? Presumably batch bake?

They are only 15cm (6") tins - I think the recipe assumes you could get 5 tins onto two shelves in a standard oven. You'd want to be fairly confident that your oven baked evenly to put three tins on one shelf!

You don't even need to use all five. Try three layers - a 15cm shallow tin probably only needs a 1 egg mixture (1 egg, 50g each butter, sugar and flour). If you made a 4 egg mixture and filled each tin a maximum of 2/3 full, it would be a good trial for future use.

Herbidacious wrote:How do you fit them all in the oven? Presumably batch bake?

They are only 15cm (6") tins - I think the recipe assumes you could get 5 tins onto two shelves in a standard oven. You'd want to be fairly confident that your oven baked evenly to put three tins on one shelf!

Tezza, in the nicest possible way, I gather from some of your recent posts,money's a bit tight, so maybe a five tier cake may be a bit extravagant , considering you live on your own. Baking is very therapeutic though,for me anyway, so maybe start with a traybake or muffins,which would be easier to give some to friends and family